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From Russia With Love…to the Guardian

The Russian Embassy in London has issued an epic, 15-paragraph statement that can be appraised only in the way Henry James described Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”: It’s a “loose baggy monster.”

The embassy issued the statement—which casually accuses the British press of engineering the Crimean War—on its website Monday in response to a Guardian article about Russian diplomats lobbying the Tory Party.

What separates the embassy’s statement from others in its oeuvre is a simultaneous triumph of content and form. It covers at least five wars (Syria, Iraq, Cold, First-World, Crimean), while also referencing Florence Nightingale, the Charge of the Light Brigade, John le Carré, Henry Kissinger, Lord Herbert of Lea, Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History,” Sochi 2014 and British meat exports. Its form, meanwhile, pushes the boundaries of the English language.